The Jack’s Winning Words blog today featured this saying – “We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future.” (Lester Levinson)

Out Pastor always says, “Go in peace, serve the Lord”, at the end of our church service. One of my favorite people, Pastor Doug McMunn of the Milford United Methodist Church often interjects, “Be at peace” into conversations. We also have been given a promise of a “peace that passes all understanding” when we join Jesus in Heaven.

So, what is this peace that is so important and how might we achieve it? I think today’s saying in Jack’s blog is the key – we must let go. The thing that we must let go of is our ego, the thing within us that drives us to try to understand and change the past and to control the future. Our inability to surrender to God’s will torments us and keeps us from achieving peace.

That constant need to understand and to control is our own ego inserting itself between us and God. I don’t think that there is anything particularly wrong with trying to understand and learn from something that happened in the past, but it is also necessary to let it go, to put it in the past and get on with life. Instead, we beat up ourselves for what we perceive were our mistakes or we blame others for their influence on the outcome of things. There is no peace to be found in playing the “coulda, woulda, shoudla” game over and over in our minds.

Even less peaceful is worrying about the future; fretting about what might happen and how we might be able to control things. Our minds are wonderful things, but left untethered they are as likely to come up with a nightmare, as they are to conjure up a pleasant dream. There is nothing wrong with having some contingency plans in place; however, dwelling on how to control every possible thing that could go wrong is both wasteful and fruitless and certainly not peaceful.

How can one break the grip of our ego’s and be more at peace? Instead of surrendering control of your life to your ego, you can surrender it to God and trust the direction that He is taking you. I’ve shared the little prayer that I use many time, but I truly believe that it is the key to achieving peace. I just stop myself, usually in the midst of what my ego is telling me is a crisis that I must somehow try to control, and quietly say to God, “Not my will but thy will be done.” I usually experience an immediate sense of peace and the crisis fades into the background noise of life. Try it. Maybe it will help you achieve peace, too.

So, as you go through the rest of the week, put your trust in God and, as Pastor McMunn would say…Be at peace.

It may be opined that Nicks was not talking about physical wounds, but rather those wounds to our ego that are inflicted upon us by others through actions or words, or perhaps wounds that are self-inflicted. The same can be said about the wounds that we may inflict upon others, either intentional or inadvertent. Sometimes the wounds come from perceived slights (real or imagined) rather than from overt actions or words. In any case the advice that Nicks give is not to let those wounds fester, not to neglect them; rather you should deal with them.

If you read the advice columns in the papers, you will notice that many of the letters to the columnists deal with these types of wounds. They are filled with laments that “she said this about me” or “he did that to me” and sometimes just “I was left out of the family event”. Those are all wounds that need attention and writing to the advice columnist is one way to give them some attention. Perhaps the better way it to learn how to deal with your wounds yourself.

A good start is by understanding the old phrase, “perception is reality”. The person or people making the hurtful (to you anyway) comments that wound your ego have somehow come to the perception that they represent the truth (reality) about you. You must accept that, for them anyway, this is reality as far as you are concerned. If you begin by stopping to analyze what that reality is in their eyes, you might discover the grain of truth that is at the core of their perception of you. Maybe they say, “I don’t like being around him/her, because he/she is always in a bad (down) mood and I don’t want him/her to bring mine down, too.” Wow, you are perceived as Debbie Downer, the moody person who isn’t much fun to be around. How did that happen?

Maybe, whenever anyone greets you and asks how you are, you go into some long, dreary story about how bad your life is. Perhaps you are overtly seeking sympathy, or maybe you just don’t realize how a negative response to what is meant as a cheerful opening en joiner; whatever the reason, stop and think before exposing your wounds to others, in hopes that they will empathize with you. Once the initial pleasantries are exchanged, you may be able to judge whether this person has enough interest in you or is a close enough friend to share a wound or two and to seek advice from. The BFF’s in your life may be the only ones that you meet to whom you should ever expose your wounds. Do that too often with them and even BFFs will start to avoid you.

Understanding the perceptions that you give people does not really treat your wounds, but it may help prevent even more wounds from people who are turned off by your behavior or demeanor. So, maybe rule number one should be, “Don’t wear your wounds on your sleeve for everyone to see”

Rule number two might be, “Do something about it – treat your wounds.” Wounds to your ego are like zits on the face of a teenager. They may make you self-conscious, they may shake your self-confidence, or they may just make you frustrated and mad. If carried in silence they can lead you into dark places where others will avoid going.

I have posted here before about dealing with problems and putting them behind you. That is the best way to handle your wounds, too. First, acknowledge that something that you did or that someone else did is bothering you – it is an open wound. Then determine if there is anything that you or anyone else might do that would correct, mitigate or make right what has happened or what was said. If it was you who said something that hurt someone else, and now that thoughtless action has bounced back to wound you; then you know who can fix that. Apologizing and saying that you are sorry to the person impacted by your actions will have a salving effect on them and on you. You may cure two wounds at once.

If someone else has offended you somehow, causing a wound that you wish to heal, the most honest approach is to confront them directly and explain how what they said or did made you feel; how it wounded you. Unless you have been attacked by a malevolent person who is out to do you harm for some reason, most of the time you will find that the other person didn’t mean to cause you any harm or pain – the slight or comment was inadvertent or perhaps totally misunderstood. It helps to start out by giving the other party the benefit of the doubt that the incident was really meant to wound you.

If, somehow, the wound that you are feeling was self-inflicted, caused by some action that you took that you now regret; you need to give yourself some slack and try to turn this into a learning experience. Beating yourself up is never the best way to deal with a failure or a mistake. Stop an analyze what your thought process was going into the event and which of the assumptions that you might have made, or which “facts” that you were relying on, might have been wrong and steered you in the wrong direction. Learn from it.

Rule three is perhaps the hardest, but most important – forgive and move on. You can’t really move on with life carrying around a bunch of open wounds. You need to forgive the other person or yourself for what happened, acknowledge that it is in the past, and move on. Even the gravest of perceived slights or actions by someone else against you must be forgiven and you certainly must be able to forgive yourself, if you are to get out of self-pity mode and get back to living.

Examples of people forgiving the most egregious offenses that I have ever seen have been featured on TV News. The survivors of the horrendous church shootings in South Caroline have forgiven the shooter. There have been other reports of similar acts of forgiveness for other horrendous crimes or actions. If you watch those reports, you will notice a sense of peace that those people have achieved by being able to forgive the other person. Certainly they will carry memories of those events for the rest of their lives; but they will not carry wounds – they have forgiven and moved on.

It is noteworthy that most of those reports of people forgiving the most heinous of perpetrators are about people with a strong foundation of belief in God in their lives. As part of their healing process, they have taken their wounds to God and He has healed them. They are able to say “I forgive you” to the person how harmed them because they are secure in the belief that God has forgiven them all of their sins, no matter how small or large.

I like the way Lewis B. Smedes put it – “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”

So, forgive and turn away from the past; and look to your future with hope. You have healed your wounds.

“Feel good about who you see in the mirror, not what you see.” – Norm Werner

I’ve posted recently about topics that may not have appealed to everyone – autism and depression. The posts were more about being aware that a so-called “normal” person has no good frame of reference through which to view the world as a person living with either of those conditions sees it and thus we should strive instead for acceptance, empathy, patience and a willingness to listen and offer support.

Today I’d like to return to you, or to me, as the case may be, and how we deal with our self-image. The society that we live in puts a great deal of emphasis on what we see in the mirror and not who we see there. Physical beauty and fitness are good; while plainness and deformity or obesity are bad. By implication, the image that we see in the mirror of our physical appearance predisposes us to draw conclusions about the character and worth of the person that is there. Yet, stare as hard as you might, you will never actually see the traits like honesty, integrity, humility, kindness or a loving and giving heart that really makes up who you see in that mirror.

Mahatma Gandhi was not an imposing or even impressive figure of a man in the mirror, yet he led a nation to freedom. I’m sure that some who may have encountered Mother Teresa in India, and not known who she was, would have just seen a squat, homely looking old lady in a nun’s habit and not realized that they were seeing someone who would one day become a Saint. Many who met Lech Walesa in his early years as an activist in Poland might have just seen a somewhat angry little Polish electrician who could be dismissed, rather than the future leader of Poland and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And, how about Detroit activist Rosa Parks? She was certainly not a lady trading on her looks when she decided not to move to the back of the bus, adding fuel the civil rights movement locally. Do you think that any of these people were concerned about what they saw when they looked in the mirror? I suspect that they were much more satisfied with who they saw there, and not the least concerned with what they saw.

How do you refocus so that you feel good about who you see in the mirror and not worry so much about what you see there? First, realize that all of those people would have almost always seen others around them in that same mirror – those that they were helping and those that were helping along with them. So, join in the movements and groups in your community that are trying to help in your area – get involved. They would have also noticed that they seemed to always be doing something and not just standing there by themselves and admiring themselves. In fact they probably passed many mirrors and never even noticed themselves in those looking glasses, because they were too busy “doing” to spend time looking.

Get busy doing. Don’t worry about what others may think of you; focus instead on what you can do for others. Commit yourself to what you can do, to your part in the bigger scheme of things, and be happy with that contribution. If asked about their contributions to society, the people mentioned above might have had answers that sounded amazingly similar, “I’m just one person trying to do what I can to help others.” Reflect on that.

Do you see yourself in roles like that? Do you see yourself helping others, without personal concerns about how you look? Do you see yourself joining others in efforts to help that are bigger than one person can accomplish by themselves? Do you see yourself stopping to ask the homeless man what he needs and how you can help? Do you see yourself getting your hands dirty on a weekend helping to build a new home for someone? Do you see yourself standing in the middle of a street with a collection bucket doing what you can to help people that you will never meet? Do you see yourself serving a Thanksgiving meal at a shelter? Do you see yourself visiting a shut-in in a local retirement home? Do you see yourself reaching out to help someone who is experiencing a tough time in their life and just need a friend to talk with?

If you see yourself doing any of those things, or performing other acts of kindness, charity or love towards others when you look into the mirror; then you are seeing who you are, not what you look like and that’s a beautiful thing. If all you see in the mirror that you hold up
to your life is someone looking back at you who needs a bit more mascara this morning or who might need to visit the gym to lose a little weight; perhaps you need to find a new mirror.